Daemon

ever been. This wasn’t the tattooed, pierced, neo-tribal rebellious bullshit of his generation. This was a quiet demonstration of networked power. This was
it
.
    Gragg selected
HD Video Multiplexer
from the drop-down menu. A new browser window appeared containing a selection of six thumbnail images. They appeared to be streaming video feeds. Gragg saw an image of a car in one thumbnail, and he double-clicked on it – as anyone his age would do. It expanded to fill the window. It was a live image of his car. He waved his hand, and his hand appeared waving on the video feed. Gragg noticed a superimposed red bracket around his license plate. A call-out label showed the software’s interpretation of the tag number. It was correct. So Sobol was employing an optical license plate reader. Gragg knew it was commercially available software – used all the time on interstates and downtown roads. But Sobol needed access to DMV records to determine who owned the car. He must have cracked a DMV database in order to get his registration information. Gragg considered the hourly rate of the average DMV worker and realized that gaining access wasn’t a problem for Sobol.
    In the background of the video, there was a similar bracketaround the VW Vanagon’s license plate. Gragg couldn’t help but wonder what was up with that. The van was smashed all to hell.
    He closed that dialog box and checked out the other video feeds. There were cameras placed all around the cinder-block building, guarding it from every direction. Every time the wind blew, the swaying branches were outlined by vectored lines trying to resolve into something recognized by the software. Gragg found himself watching the red lines appear and disappear like a lava lamp. Motion-capture software? This was sophisticated stuff. No one would ever suspect that this isolated blockhouse held so much processing power.
    Gragg closed the video feeds and moved around to the other visible features of the diagram. He noticed that a garagelike protrusion extended from the rear of the building. He pointed his mouse at it, and the words ‘H1 Alpha’ materialized beneath his pointer. That explained the damage to the Vanagon. There was an automated Hummer here – just like at Sobol’s mansion. Gragg smiled. It
was
Sobol. He was walking in the footsteps of a genius. To his dismay, there was no more information visible for the Hummer, so he clicked on one of the nodes around the base of the building. The label ‘Seismic Sensors’ appeared. Probably for detection of approaching vehicles and people.
    As Gragg scrolled around the base of the building illustration, a rollover displayed the red, glowing outline of a door in the front wall. He looked up at the real wall some twenty feet ahead of him. He couldn’t see any indication that there was a door in the plain cinder blocks. He hovered his mouse cursor back over the section of wall in the diagram, and a drop-down menu appeared. It had two selections: ‘Open’ and ‘Close.’ Gragg clicked ‘Open.’
    In front of his car, he saw a section of the cinderblock wall move inward and then slide sideways – revealing a dark doorway about five feet wide. Gragg half expected roilingsteam to emanate from the opening. It was outlined with a soft red glow.
    Was this it? Was he supposed to enter? He looked around warily. That would require getting out of his car.
    The spotlight from the building still shined down on the area, revealing what a horrendous morass of mud he’d driven into. He had no idea how he’d get the car out without a tow truck. He couldn’t stay in here forever.
    Gragg shut down his laptop and packed up all his gear. In a few minutes he had everything in his rucksack except for his Glock 9mm – which he kept in his right hand. Gragg opened the Tempo’s driver door with its trademark 1980s-Detroit-crack-squeak sound. He gingerly placed one combat-booted foot into the quagmire and felt it sink up to his knee. He groaned in disgust, but realizing he had no choice, he followed it with his other foot, closing the car door behind him. Pretty soon he was stagger-stepping through the deep mud toward the dark opening in the cinder-block wall.
    Gragg stopped and took another look at the smashed VW Vanagon with Louisiana plates and anarchy bumper stickers. Shattered taillight plastic and twisted side moldings littered the area. The left rear wheel of the VW was smashed into immobility, set at an angle to the axle. The